How to Pick Up the Shards of Your Life
by neech
Summary: Pre- Ironman 2. Unbenownst to her boss, Virginia Potts' life didn't spontaneously start at 30. A take on Virginia Potts and the moulding influence we like to call 'family'.


_i. this is the secret that nobody knows/ and it starts like this:_

Like all stories, there is a girl. Not a woman- it begins with a girl, with doe eyes, small hips and scabby knees. Her name is Virginia Potts. Virginia grows up in the quiet streets of Carmel-by-the-sea, in a neighbourhood with golden maple leaves and the welcoming swirl of coastal air around her. It's a homely neighbourhood, a friendly one where houses are living extensions of their residents and their personalities. The place is filled with children, dogs and laughter, and somehow, everyone is family (even when they are not). Virginia stays in a small cottage that faces the sea, cosy with creeping ivy up and down its walls and a Granny Smith apple tree that curls to deposit swollen fruit by her window. Here, Virginia learns to read and write and count to a thousand thousands. Here, Virginia learns advanced calculus and the exact shade of her hair is called 'titian'. Here, Virginia learns 'right' and 'wrong' and how all conversations lead to life, love or her mother.

Like all stories, there is a boy (but oh, not yet, not just yet).

In this story, there is a family. Her father is tall, a towering giant larger than memory can supply, with strong shoulders and eyes that are greener than the sea, but brighter. In memory, this man is real- more vivid and alive than she can imagine, with his wit and cheer and oh, his smile. She remembers his hair most of all- a fire of red, a few shades lighter than her own- because her hair is his, in the same way she is part of him, and he part of her. She is his precious, his halfling-not-quite-elf with the wiry red mane, his littlest daughter with no resemblance to him but the hair. This is the man who teaches her how to drive, schools her in the language of poetry, sonnets and Shakespeare, educates her on the beauty of Tolkien, the Beatles and data organisation- defines her. This is the man who teases her with words of sugar and spice and everything nice, until she kicks a fifth-grader's teeth in for pulling on her pigtails- from that moment on he calls her 'Pepper'.

This is the man who loves her, unconditionally.

There is also her mother. Her mother is made of old-school glamour, Hollywood-style but with an added touch of class. She is beautiful where Virginia is not, elegant and classy, an almost-goddess in plaid and cotton. Oh, she loves Virginia, there is no doubt, but she's a memory, the bare-bones imprint of a woman long-gone. (and this is irony, because she's there, but she's not home- the lights are off and they can't be switched on) In Virginia's memory, she smiles and laughs but there is no sound in the black-and-white movie stuck on re-run, just her face and her smile, repeating to an unspoken question, over and over and over.

This is how the story ends- because all stories eventually end, even fairy-tales and myths and the stuff made of legends. Its just whether one gets to see the final curtain call, her father tells her once, and even now she still believes it to be true. This is the truth: he dies, and his wife goes crazy and Pepper is the only one left to pick up the pieces. (and she doesn't calls herself Virginia from that point either)

_ii. this is the story of a little girl that nobody knows/ and it reads like this:_

This is the truth: Pepper doesn't enjoy high school. It's a living hell. And Pepper knows this: life is hard when you're the tall, gangly, redheaded girl that nobody knows, the invisible kid in the corner that wears black, blends into walls and goes home because she has no friends. Or that's the assumption. The truth is this: it's hard, when you're the child forced to grow up too fast, balancing three temp jobs, college apps and remembering the times your mother needs to take her psych meds.

It's especially fucking difficult when your mother doesn't even know your damn name. It's painful. It hurts when you're watching your own mother sing garbled nursery rhymes in croaked whispers, and talk to the doorknob because it's somehow more sentient than you (you she ignores). It hurts because when she finally calls you 'Sarah', she's almost lucid, real- but yet not. She calls you 'Sarah' with the broken, broken voice that is not hers and this is not your mother.

Pepper cares for her, even though this twisted, damaged shell is not her mother. Pepper's always been good at looking after people. It works, well enough until Pepper is eighteen, finally grown into her lanky frame, and by God if she isn't one of the most attractive woman the college guys have ever seen. It doesn't matter though. Pepper learns to hate her looks, not for the benefits they bring, but for the misfortune that follows. It's one of those days that her mother takes a look at her face and begins to scream, shrieking in harpy-like fury and tries to scratch Pepper's eyes from her face.

"Bitch! Whore! Who are you! You're not my Sarah! Get out of my house!"

Life is hard when your mother doesn't recognise you, doesn't know your name. Life is difficult enough. So, for the first (and last) time in her life, Pepper stops fighting against the flow.

_iii. tell me a secret nobody knows/ and it goes like this:_

Pepper's first five job interviews go terribly. It's after three months of unemployment when Pepper's resolve finally cracks and she applies for the first job she sees in the Sunday recruitment paper. _'Female. No work experience necessary'_ proclaims the advertisement with the words 'Stark Enterprises' emblazoned in bold on its header. But after those three long months, Pepper has stopped giving a crap about applying for a dead-end job on planet nowhere, and her, with her qualifications and her graduating _cum laude_ from UCLA. Somehow titles and honours don't mean shit when you can't feed yourself. After surviving a couple of months of plain bread and eggs, starvation no longer seems a viable option. So sue her.

It's a surprise then, when she meets the infamous Tony Stark at her interview. She'd have thought of him taller. Admittedly, Anthony Edward Stark is charmingly handsome, (decently) tall and dapper in a nicely-pressed shirt and well-tailored pants. The first thing Pepper notices about Tony, however, is what an incorrigible flirt he is, a regular Don Juan with an American grin and a blue twinkle to his eyes. That and his cufflinks don't match. (highly likely because he dressed in the dark, but her mind won't go there now, not yet) He charms and flirts and throws around sexual innuendos as if they grow on trees, but there's something in his smile that she likes, something that tells her that he'll back off easy enough, in time. And he does, once she makes it clear she isn't interested in getting into his pants, just the job- always was the job, always will be. Pepper finds that she likes this very much. Possibly even like him.

When the interview ends, he treats her to a cup of designer coffee at a café downtown, a warm, calloused palm gripping her shoulder in a decidedly-platonic gesture when the small-talk ebbs and fades. "When can you start?" he asks, and she smiles and smiles and can't stop smiling. "Tomorrow." she says, and then it's over, and he's leaving like he wasn't even there before. He kisses the palm of her hand as a form of greeting and goodbye, a small chaste kiss just south of her lifeline, and then he's gone. Pepper can't for the life of her figure out why her hands are tingling.

This is the truth she has not told, not even to herself: Pepper takes the job because there's something in Tony's easy smile that reminds her of her father.

_iv. whisper to the wind a secret that nobody knows/ and its sounds like this:_

The is how the chess game plays out: Pepper doesn't cope with Tony's disappearance, not really, not at all. Oh, she works and runs Tony's life as per usual, just Tony's not there to live it and Pepper's waiting for a wayward soul to come home. (the word Rhodey uses is 'missing, suspected dead' but those words don't fit into a Pott's vocabulary) All there is is endless time and the never-ending work that needs to be done, so Pepper does her damn job and works. What shocks her are the words that Obie mentions in fragments, in between the brief spattering of meaningless apologies, chiding, sweet-talk and mentions of six-months leave, words of 'transferring departments', 'moving up the corporate ladder' and 'salary increases'- things that seem to have to do with 'dead boss', but Obidiah Stane knows better than to say those words and he doesn't. Pepper, if anything, takes to ignoring his calls, and sticks to talking to Rhodey and Jarvis instead (she's seen her employee file, afterall. Her loyalties lie elsewhere).

Life goes on. Pepper's routine doesn't alter itself in the large, life-changing ways, not really. She still starts at eight and knocks off at never, and life continues on its way without coming to a standstill. It's only after two months, of morning after morning of cold, untouched coffee that reality sets in: clean crisp sheets and a ready household won't make a person come home, no matter how hard and often Pepper prays. And for a while, Pepper cracks and tears a little at the seams (or she doesn't). Perhaps not. The coffee doesn't stop, nor does the drycleaning or the data filing or the list of endless tasks that she does and needs done. But the nights she spends over at work get longer and closer and colder, and Pepper starts to walk the house at twilight with Tony's coffee mug gripped between her hands.

It's the nightmares, she thinks, when she pins it down to a reason. It's the nightmares of fleeting shadows and screams of piercing glass and the dreadful, awful sound of silence. And the madness. She does not forget the madness.

So Pepper does not sleep, but pads around in an oversized sweater and drinks Tony's hidden stash of hot cocoa (extra-sweeted, Cadbury milk). The sun comes out, and the crazy Pepper- the Pepper-that-doesn't-sleep, the scared one, the grieving one- recedes and wanes like the waxing moon, hidden and dormant beneath the surface (and Pepper knows this, as well as she knows herself).

And the truth is this: Pepper works, if only to distract her from herself.

_v. there is an unspoken shame that nobody knows/ and it cannot be said because of this:_

There is a phone call once, a phone call she nearly doesn't pick up.

Pepper is asleep for the first time in nights, sprawled over her laptop and tangled in a blanket of Tony's she's using to keep warm. It's been a rough day, nearly harrowing by Pepper's standards, and she falls into an exhausted, dreamless sleep for the first time in weeks. It takes her a while (and the while is long) for her to register the words, words spoken frantically and and rapid-fire as the bullets leaving the chamber of a machine gun. They are words that she doesn't quite process, even as the voice begins to scream and keen and by God it hurts her ears- and it goes quiet with a click of the receiver being carefully, gently returned to its place.

_fucking slut- you no-good, useless- abandon her on her doorstep- thank God your mother is dead!_

Pepper doesn't remember moving that hand.

There is a phone call, another one the next day- a phone call Pepper nearly doesn't pick up.

It's the one she never regrets.

_vi. this is a secret she may or may not know/ and she finds out like this:_

There is a place she remembers, on the barest outskirts of Carmel town. There is a mound there, a miniature hill of red earth protruding from the dirt, like Mons Olympus but smaller. There is a rock she remembers, atop this hill, tiny and irregularly shaped with one word scribbled on the surface. 'Sarah', it says, in little black writing, heavily smudged and Pepper has to squint to read the words. To her five year old mind, it looks like a little ant-hill, borne of hard work and toil of scrabbling black insects. Digging, digging digging.

To her thirty-year old mind, she knows what it isn't.

And Pepper wonders whether that crude, makeshift little red grave houses her mother's dead daughter.

_vii. this is something she does not know/ and she does not know it because of this:_

Pepper Potts never learns to like socializing with Tony's associates- mostly because they're either pricks, bastards, bigots or old-fashioned fuckheads. Pepper's classification, however, only extends its regard to the male gender- Pepper never thinks to analyse Tony's female friends because in regards to type- the truth is there is only one.

That doesn't mean Pepper's bad at at her job though- in fact, quite the opposite. Pepper's artfully mastered the art of Tony Stark diplomacy: smiling and pretending to adore someone (and their accessories- jewellery, car, trophy-partner et cetera) when Tony's not there; blissfully somewhere else while Pepper takes the heat and tries very hard not to barf. But the Stark School of Bullshit has taught her well: she knows this as she rubs shoulders with the rich and famous without a single grimace on her face.

The Fireman's Benefit is almost tame, by her standards- but that's mostly because Tony isn't here. When asked, Obie claims Tony 'has a prior engagement', but in Obie-speak, it means 'Tony's fucking another brunette against the bedposts, remind the maid to change the sheets, thanks'. She doesn't question it. The truth is, it isn't easy to get lost in translation with Tony. The only variations in the sentence are hair colour and location of coitus, and even then, it's not difficult to guess. After nearly six years of employment, Pepper's learned that the type of woman Tony wants goes by mood, preoccupation with work and day of the week and therefore tries not to think about it too much.

And oh, Pepper knows what a jerk Tony Stark is- because how ridiculous is choosing your next fuck by the day of the week anyway? But Tony is still her boss, her friend and a man who she admires, respects and cares for dearly, a man who a week ago she thought was dead. Tony's still her fucking best friend- one of her only friends. He's still the only person she'd trust with her life, and she thinks they both know this.

And then Tony arrives, and oh how Pepper feels like killing herself for wearing that godforsaken blue dress, because Tony's staring at her like an attractive woman for the first time in years- and the press will talk- and if he pushes she might fall and she never wanted to be just another notch on his bedpost. (not like this. not like- _this_) The dress is backless, and she can feel his eyes on her. She hates it. Hates it for the way she feels when he looks, warmth travelling up and down the path of his eyes, before dropping rapidly to the pit of her stomach; it makes her dizzy.

Tony's breath ghosting past her ear, and Pepper suddenly feels like the world's orbit has altered, whirring too fast or too slow; she can't tell, except for how wrong it is, alien and different in a way she can't explain.

Pepper doesn't know what makes her lean in to kiss him. Only the kiss doesn't happen, nothing happens except for the stunned expression on Tony's face and Pepper wishes she can just erase it all, like it never happened (and she wonders why it hurts). She either needs a drink or to bolt, but Tony however, is in favour of the former, and Pepper is left by the banister with nothing but confusion, residual lust and a feeling of different towards something she never wanted to change, not before.

And Pepper wonders what it is.

_viii. this is a side of Pepper she does not want to know/ and it is because of this:_

Pepper doesn't really know why she tells him her story in the end, the life she pretends not to have just because she does not live in it. Most probably it's because she's drunk- no, not quite, just that the alcohol eases the truth past her lips as they sit and on the patio facing Tony's private beach, and they're both tired and sombre on a quiet, windy day. It's a year from Tony's return from Afghanistan, and she doesn't know why he treats it like a date worth remembering- the day when he comes back a little more broken, a little more battered: a man torn apart but re-assembled back together, only that the scars show through and Pepper has to pretend she can't see them. But he remembers, and so does she.

She tells him the truth, complete, unvarnished and surprisingly austere. And Tony is wonderful about it, holding her hand (stroking) and paying attention to the wreck that is Pepper's personal life and he just - listens. He doesn't even interrupt when she tells him about her father's death in the Persian Gulf (she still keeps his medal of honour in the shelf by her bedside drawer), when she tells him about her mother, psychotic episodes and all. It's only the moment when she tells him about the _phone-call-she-nearly-does-not-pick-up_, the funeral she misses, the family that hates her and the mother she has not let herself grieve for, that the ministrations stop and Pepper is left with the quiet, awkward silence. It's sharp, painful almost and she wonders whether she can hate herself more. She realises she can.

It's with horror that she remembers Tony never had a chance to say his goodbyes, and she just- just fucking gave hers up like it meant nothing. Because her boss came back, or her family doesn't want her. But mostly because her mother used to throw things because Pepper doesn't remind her of the baby girl she lost. It doesn't sound like a good enough reason, even in her head.

Mostly because it isn't.

_ix. this is the truth about Virginia 'Pepper' Potts/ and it sounds something like this:_

The cemetery is vividly green, beautifully lush with sizable trees and well-tended vegetation. It looks exactly the way she remembers it.

A feeling slips into Pepper's chest as she takes slow, measured steps down the beaten pathway, feet tracing coarse stones and comparing it against memory. She thinks she can remember each and every one of them. (she can) There are thirty-three in total, and there it is: her father's epitaph visible in the distance. _I, Who Have Fought and Died in Service of My Country _- they are words she remembers well, mostly because they mean nothing, at least not to her. 'Wrong place, wrong time' is what her father's commanding officer tells her at the funeral. These words - words meant to be said with pride and honour- are a travesty and a lie and they leave a bitter taste in her mouth, a sharp acrid tang that urges her to gag, only she doesn't.

The headstone next to it is carved handsomely, strong yet feminine in cold marble and crisp lettering, and for the first time in a year Pepper thinks: 'my mother is dead.'

"I knew who your mother was, Pepper Potts. I've always known. I met her once at a concert when I was ten. Can't really recall much, except how beautifully she sang. She was a wonderful singer." Tony cocks his head at her inquiringly, murmuring the words into the slow, bleeding rays of sunset. "Soprano. My mother adored her."

Pepper forgets how to breathe.

Tony's hand curls around hers, a familiar, comforting gesture. It scares her. "Genevieve Amanda Potts lost her first daughter, Sarah. She died of pneumonia, aged three. But she had another beautiful daughter, and she loved her too." His fingers interlace with hers, and Pepper's hand feels like it's on fire. "She loved you."

And it is this. Pepper knows this.

Pepper doesn't fall to her knees, doesn't stop to trace the words written on her mother's tombstone and apologise because- just because. Because Pepper Potts is not a girl, no longer a child who believes foolish mistakes can be made up with tears and remorse; the grown-up world doesn't work that way. Because Pepper isn't quite sure who'd she be apologising to: her mother, Tony or herself.

Just because.

And Pepper remembers the sweet, dulcet tones of her mother, singing softly with the accompaniment of the upright piano, her father's fingers darting over the ivory keys. She has a voice of liquid honey, lilting and gentle as she hums into her daughter's ear, twisting soft red hair into plaits of violet gold. Her mother sings her daughter's favourite songs on the stereo, purrs the words into a barest lullaby as her daughter curls into her lap. She strokes little Virginia's hair and says 'my beautiful daughter, Ginny'. 'I love you.' And _God she remembers_.

When Pepper comes to (she doesn't remember fainting), it's to the sight of Tony's bright blue eyes and that beautiful, beautiful smile. The only thing she can think of is how_ not like her father he is_, and this - this is different. This is different and unique and special in the ways she can never fully describe: what she never knew she wanted- but she did.

But Tony knew.

The look in Tony's eyes changes to something she's never seen, something foreign that's never been there but it's so achingly familiar, something she's seen before, in the secret depths pooling in other people's eyes, Pepper thinks she knows what it is. Pepper doesn't pause as she leans in to meet Tony's mouth in a kiss.

And she does.


End file.
